James (John Travolta) and Mollie Ubriacco (Kirstie Alley) continue to raise their rambunctious children, Mikey (David Gallagher) Julie (Tabitha Lupien). With the holidays approaching James attains his dream job as a pilot for executive Samantha D'Bonne (Lysette Anthony) at the same time Mollie is laid off from her accounting firm. With Christmas approaching Mikey soon discovers a man taking off his Santa beard leading him to no longer believing in Santa, meanwhile Mollie becomes insecure with James' frequent absences and finds herself feeling paranoid that James and Samantha are inching towards an affair. Through additional circumstances they also find themselves taking in two dogs, rough and tumble mutt Rocks (Danny DeVito) and pedigreed and refined poodle Daphne (Diane Keaton).
With Look Who's Talking becoming the fourth highest grossing film of 1989, 1990 gave us the inevitable sequel a mere 14 months after the first film. Domestically the Look Who's Talking Too made $47 million, well short of the $140 million of its predecessor most likely due to its unfortunate release between two similarly targeted films Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop being released before and after it. Thankfully the for Tri-Star the film did quite well internationally making an estimated $73 million in foreign territories. While short of the juggernaut the first film was, Look Who's Talking Too made enough for Tri-Star to greenlight one additional entry. Kirstie Alley was initially reluctant to return as Mollie with initial drafts intending to kill the character off between movies and positioning Travolta's James as a single father looking to get back in the dating scene. Executives nixed this idea early on and new directing/writing team Tom Ropelewski and Leslie Dixon approached Alley again and convinced her to return having worked with her on the movie Madhouse. With the children now old enough to speak in story, the writers instead put the inner monologues in the heads of two dogs adopted by the family. This franchise has long since worn out its welcome, and despite a cast with charisma and charm, even they can't hold up a film made that has nowhere to take its characters.
Pretty much everything in Look Who's Talking Now it feels like it belongs in a sitcom. The setup is like a sitcom, the stakes are like a sitcom, even the plots and relationships feel like they belong are suited in a sitcom. There's no real plot in this movie as like the second film it's just a bunch of "mini-plots" duct taped together into something that superficially resembles a full film. Most of these plots like the rambunctious pets, the children doubting Santa Claus, or the paranoia about a loved on having an affair with a "sexy" boss, co-worker, or prospective client, all of these have been used as premises for sitcom episodes. Yes these plots have been used in good films, but when they're done there they're typically given more weight and substance in either character or thematic material. Here however, because they're all "subplots" they're all given surface level (at best) treatment and these characters are so flat and one note there's nothing that can be mined from this material. Kirstie Alley's Mollie continues to have her neuroses dialed up to exaggerated levels and Travolta's charm is no longer carrying his good natured doofus character who doesn't have anything to do except smile and reject the advances of Samantha, enough plot for a 22 minute TV episode really stretched in a 90 minute movie. Diane Keaton and Danny DeVito voice the inner monologues of the family's two dogs Daphne and Rocks and even these two talented performers can't elevate this material. Like how Look Who's Talking Too had the misfortune of being released between Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop, Look Who's Talking Now had the misfortune to be released 9 months after a much better talking dog (and cat) movie with Disney's Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey giving a much better take on this kind of material by having a full narrative rather than just stapling some stock plots together and giving us an artificial climax involving wolves that feels artificial, unearned, and manipulative. And that "believing in Santa" subplot culminating in the most hackney cliché you can imagine where the existence of Santa is made is "definitively made".
Look Who's Talking Now limply concludes the inexplicable trilogy of comedies built upon inoffensive mediocrity that suckered people in the first time with a gimmick of rambling ADR from a celebrity voice and ran that into the ground well before the second film was even released. I'm not even mad at it, because it's like getting mad at the series finale of a show you didn't even like in the first place. I could at least appreciate elements of Amy Heckerling's commentary or observations in the first film, even the first film had glimpses of "hmm, that's okay I guess", but Look Who's Talking Now is just nothing. It probably doesn't even deserve this level of analysis.
With Look Who's Talking becoming the fourth highest grossing film of 1989, 1990 gave us the inevitable sequel a mere 14 months after the first film. Domestically the Look Who's Talking Too made $47 million, well short of the $140 million of its predecessor most likely due to its unfortunate release between two similarly targeted films Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop being released before and after it. Thankfully the for Tri-Star the film did quite well internationally making an estimated $73 million in foreign territories. While short of the juggernaut the first film was, Look Who's Talking Too made enough for Tri-Star to greenlight one additional entry. Kirstie Alley was initially reluctant to return as Mollie with initial drafts intending to kill the character off between movies and positioning Travolta's James as a single father looking to get back in the dating scene. Executives nixed this idea early on and new directing/writing team Tom Ropelewski and Leslie Dixon approached Alley again and convinced her to return having worked with her on the movie Madhouse. With the children now old enough to speak in story, the writers instead put the inner monologues in the heads of two dogs adopted by the family. This franchise has long since worn out its welcome, and despite a cast with charisma and charm, even they can't hold up a film made that has nowhere to take its characters.
Pretty much everything in Look Who's Talking Now it feels like it belongs in a sitcom. The setup is like a sitcom, the stakes are like a sitcom, even the plots and relationships feel like they belong are suited in a sitcom. There's no real plot in this movie as like the second film it's just a bunch of "mini-plots" duct taped together into something that superficially resembles a full film. Most of these plots like the rambunctious pets, the children doubting Santa Claus, or the paranoia about a loved on having an affair with a "sexy" boss, co-worker, or prospective client, all of these have been used as premises for sitcom episodes. Yes these plots have been used in good films, but when they're done there they're typically given more weight and substance in either character or thematic material. Here however, because they're all "subplots" they're all given surface level (at best) treatment and these characters are so flat and one note there's nothing that can be mined from this material. Kirstie Alley's Mollie continues to have her neuroses dialed up to exaggerated levels and Travolta's charm is no longer carrying his good natured doofus character who doesn't have anything to do except smile and reject the advances of Samantha, enough plot for a 22 minute TV episode really stretched in a 90 minute movie. Diane Keaton and Danny DeVito voice the inner monologues of the family's two dogs Daphne and Rocks and even these two talented performers can't elevate this material. Like how Look Who's Talking Too had the misfortune of being released between Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop, Look Who's Talking Now had the misfortune to be released 9 months after a much better talking dog (and cat) movie with Disney's Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey giving a much better take on this kind of material by having a full narrative rather than just stapling some stock plots together and giving us an artificial climax involving wolves that feels artificial, unearned, and manipulative. And that "believing in Santa" subplot culminating in the most hackney cliché you can imagine where the existence of Santa is made is "definitively made".
Look Who's Talking Now limply concludes the inexplicable trilogy of comedies built upon inoffensive mediocrity that suckered people in the first time with a gimmick of rambling ADR from a celebrity voice and ran that into the ground well before the second film was even released. I'm not even mad at it, because it's like getting mad at the series finale of a show you didn't even like in the first place. I could at least appreciate elements of Amy Heckerling's commentary or observations in the first film, even the first film had glimpses of "hmm, that's okay I guess", but Look Who's Talking Now is just nothing. It probably doesn't even deserve this level of analysis.